Today is the second installment in my 3 part series about packing for a Disney cruise. If you didn’t catch Monday’s post about packing cubes, you can read it here. Today, however, is all about princess dresses and my preferred method of packing them. I apologize if you don’t have young daughters because you probably won’t find this particularly interesting or helpful. I, however, have 3 daughters and have spent lots of time and space trying to pack multiple poofy, glittery princess dresses in the smallest, neatest, un-glitteriest way possible. (If you don’t want to deal with goofy, glittery dresses, check out these Little Adventures Dresses which I also love and are WAY easier to pack). Hopefully my trials and errors will help those of you with young daughters who may one day find yourselves needing to pack lots of princess dresses for a Disney vacation.
First of all, let’s discuss the methods I have used that didn’t really work out very well. One time I just folded them as neatly as I could and crammed all of them (5 or 6 if I remember correctly) into a suitcase. This wasn’t a very good use of space, and with the luggage fees that airlines charge nowadays, is not nearly efficient enough. It worked out ok as far as the glitter goes because they were all together and not getting glitter on any regular clothes, but they simply took up too much space. Another thing I tried was to stick them in my husband’s garment bag with his suit for formal night. This worked better than the previous method, but in order to keep his clothes glitter-free, I had to place a plastic bag over the dresses, and some glitter still managed to somehow escape and get on his stuff. Finally, I tried the following method and it is now my preferred way to pack them.
For this method, the only thing you will need is a medium or large size space saver bag. You can buy them at places like Walmart and Target, or you can shop for them online by clicking here. They come in many different brands and sizes, and for princess dresses, I typically use the medium (fits 1 or 2 dresses) or large (fits 3 or 4 dresses) size. As an example for this post, I took the 2 largest, most pouffy princess dresses I could quickly locate in our house and photographed the process. Here are the 2 dresses before I began:
Both of these dresses are size 7/8, so they are pretty big as far as princess dresses go. Here is the empty space saver bag:
Next, I folded the dresses as neatly as I could. I sort of rolled & tucked, trying to keep the bodices fairly flat:
Then, I placed the thickest dress in the bag first:
Next, I gently placed the other dress on top of the first dress and sealed the bag on the end with the zipper closure:
Now, these bags will get the flattest if you use a vacuum cleaner to suck the air out, and I will show you that in a minute. But first, I want to show you what it looks like if you just press/roll the air out. I know that most people don’t have access to a vacuum cleaner when they are packing for the return trip home, and these bags still work pretty well if you just press and roll the bag in order to get out as much of the air as possible. I took this picture after doing just that, and you can see that it is still fairly flat:
Next, I sucked the air out with a vacuum cleaner and as you can see, it got even flatter:
Here it is from another angle:
So, not only does this method take up very little space in your suitcase, it also keeps the glitter completely confined so that it doesn’t get on any of your other things. And, amazingly enough, the dresses don’t even wrinkly that badly! They will undoubtedly have at least minor wrinkles, but I have found that if I hang them in the bathroom while someone is showering and also apply a wrinkle release spray like this one (which I also use on our regular clothes), then the wrinkles either come out completely or are barely noticeable.
One word of caution about this method: even though these bags are super flat, the weight of them really adds up if you put a lot of them together. If you use this method for all of your clothes (which I have done before with my kids’ clothes) and completely fill up a suitcase with them, the suitcase will be HEAVY! Much heavier than you would expect. If you choose to use lots of space saver bags, I suggest distributing them amongst multiple suitcases in order to keep the weight of your luggage down.
You can shop for space saver bags by clicking here and wrinkle release spray by clicking here.
If you are interested in more packing tips, check out my posts here:
How I Stay Organized While Traveling
My Top 10 Disney Cruise Packing Tips
10 Things I Always Pack for a Disney Cruise
If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more, scroll down to see the archives where you can find links to all of my previous posts!
(this post contains affiliate links)
Well, I don’t have any little girls anymore (mine is all grown up and in college now), but I still enjoyed reading your post. As I began reading at the top, before scrolling down, I was thinking, “If it were me, I would try compression bags,” and of course, that is the path you took. A great solution to a packing problem I am sure many people have.
Michelle, every time you comment I realize more and more how similar we are! Between our obsessions with planning, organizing, researching, and not to mention homeschooling…..the list could go on and on! 🙂
Yeah…maybe someday we will get a chance to meet. I have never been to Texas though, so perhaps on a cruise sometime after I win the lottery. Grin!
I’m so glad to have come by this site. We leave on the Wonder next Friday and the dress is the only thing I hadn’t yet figured out how to pack. I was leaning towards the hanging bag with my husband but will now be purchasing these bags. Thanks!
You’re welcome! Enjoy your cruise!!!
I have a question as I am packing for our cruise in two weeks. Great idea on the space saver bag, but what did you do on the return trip? Was there a vacuum available on the ship to suck the air out?
I did not ask about a vacuum so I’m not sure if they will let you use one or not. I just rolled the bags up which does a decent job of removing all the air – not as good as the vacuum, but good enough (I think the rolling option is given in the instructions). After rolling to remove the air, I laid them flat in a suitcase. Enjoy your cruise!!!
How are we to repack the dresses once the bag opens? There aren’t vacuums available on the cruise ship is there?
Hi Cara! On the ship, I use the rolling technique (which is usually provided in the instructions that come with the bags). It doesn’t work quite as well as a vacuum, but it works good enough. However, the stateroom hosts have a vacuum (and can almost always be found in your hallway cleaning a room) so if you really want to do it that way, I’m sure they would be happy to assist you.